GQ&A: Robert Pattinson

Within
moments of meeting Robert Pattinson, GQ.com learns a valuable
lesson: you simply can't compete with Twilight fans. Having previously expressed
his admiration for Martin Amis in an interview, it was decided we
should present everyone's favourite server-crashing undead
heartthrob with a copy of the new Amis novel Lionel Asbo. Sadly one literary-minded
Edward Cullen devotee has trumped our gift. "I got given a
first-edition signed copy of Money by a Twilight fan in Lisbon yesterday,"
reveals Pattinson. "She was trying to tell me that she found it in
Massachusetts while we were surrounded by all these people
screaming." Pattinson stars in David Cronenberg's striking and
strange new film Cosmopolis, out this week, which sees him
as an otherworldly billionaire sating his carnal, financial and
intellectual desires riding through town in the back of a limousine
in search of a haircut. After some preliminaries (when presented
with the latest edition ofGQ he cries out "Andrew's wearing my suit!"), he talks about
his hip-hop moment of glory, the worst haircut he's ever had and
what he's learned from working with Frida Giannini at
Gucci…

Your
character has two lifts in his huge apartment, one of which is
soundtracked by hip-hop. Which rapper would you have in your
lift?
Robert Pattinson: Definitely Ol' Dirty Bastard. The
biopic looks amazing! That guy Michael K Williams as well - I was
obsessed with The Wire for ages. The guy who is
directing - Joaquín Baca-Asay, who is James Gray's director of
photography - is amazing. All his movies look incredible.

How did you feel when Tinie Tempah shouted you out on Chase &
Status' "Hitz"? What? [delighted, bewildered] I haven't heard it. I keep
hearing everyone talking about him but for some reason I never
really got into British rap. I don't know why.

The line is "Like Rob Pattinson I make a lot
of n****s jealous" Wow. That's really cool, actually. That's amazing. I
didn't realise I had that relevance [laughs]. I wonder what made
him single me out?

But she did ask about your worst
haircut… I did this movie about Salvador Dali a few years ago and
had hair extensions and a little bob. That was incredibly bizarre.
The extensions were temporary as well. I was trying to swim to
somehow get in shape two days before we started shooting in this
apartment complex in Barcelona. There were all these children
everywhere… and I was this weird, pasty, hungover person with a
girl's black bob, swimming in the pool with huge clumps of hair
falling out. I had my whole body totally waxed as well because Dali
didn't haven't any body hair. It was the most terrifying thing -
this is terrible, but I saw the potential cannibal guy [Luka
Magnotta] in the Sun today and I looked a bit like
him.

Are sex scenes getting easier? It's always a big thing. Juliette Binoche is one of my
favourite actresses and within five minutes of meeting her on this
we were pretending to have sex. Which wasn't in the script. With
both sex scenes we were supposed to have finished sex before we did
the scene. Both times David was just like, "Yeah, just have sex."
That was a little awkward. I thought that Patricia McKenzie, who I
did the other sex scene with, despised me up until that day on the
set. We hadn't said a single word to each other apart from when I
asked, "Where are you from?" and she literally looked me up and
down. I was like, "I'm not trying to do anything - I don't have any
idea!" Then on day of the sex scene she was like, "Hey how's it
going?" I don't know what kind of preparation that was for this
scene… but it definitely did something.

What TV do you never miss? In America there is a channel called TruTV which is just
reruns of Cops and World's Dumbest
Criminals. I could watch that the entire day. Someone told me
- I don't know if it's true - that David Simon watched tonnes of
Cops to get the dialogue for The Wire. I
was like, "I knew it…"

Frida taught me one thing - you
should definitely have good contacts at Gucci.

What has working
with Frida and her team at Gucci taught you about tailoring?
That's funny, I've never had her singled out before -
it's like it's a secret! She taught me one thing - you should
definitely have good contacts at Gucci. They're absolutely amazing. The amount
of times I've been stuck in some random city and have called her up
and had things brought in at absolutely the last minute - it's
crazy. But also all this stuff is custom-made. You can do quite
crazy things [with colour] if you have incredibly classic, really
well-made suits. I guess I've been quite boring for a while. I used
to be more interesting with them. Now I always just request things
two days before: "Can you send 25 suits?" I don't even know what I
want to wear!

What's the strangest gift you've got from a
fan? It's funny: there are certain things that get picked up
on really quickly. I quit smoking the other day and didn't even
really realise that I'd said anything about it. I've been chewing
these f***ing toothpicks all the time. Someone noticed in Cannes and literally the next day in Lisbon,
then in Paris and in Berlin there were about 20 people on the red
carpet giving me huge amounts of toothpicks. Thousands of them. I
don't even remember saying it in an interview but I must have said
it somewhere. That was kind of strange.

You are one of four individuals who
consistently dominate internet discussion. Out of your rivals - Nicki Minaj, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga - who are you most fond of? I really like Nicki Minaj. I think she's great. My favourite
song? She's amazing in "Monster" with Kanye West. It's annoying that I'm part of this
internet thing though - they all have Twitters and an online
presence. How did I get part of this group? I didn't do anything.
I'm trying to avoid it!

Cosmopolis is out 15 June.

Andy Morris

Andy Morris is the former editor of GQ.co.uk and a ten year veteran of GQ. Follow him on Twitter @iamandymorris.